Why Can’t American Airlines Flight Attendants Consistently Say “Hello?”

We know that American is greatly lagging Delta and United when it comes to financial performance, and executives at the airline finally realize that the airline needs to become more premium in order to succeed. So American has made an impressive number of positive changes in recent times, which the airline should be commended for.

What I find sad is the extent to which the airline fails at the basics, and seemingly doesn’t have a plan for addressing that. This seems like it should be the easiest thing to fix, yet the airline can’t seem to actually make any headwind there…

I’m on a no “hello” streak on American Airlines

It doesn’t really matter where in the world you travel, it’s pretty standard for the flight attendant at the entry door of an aircraft to proactively greet passengers as they board a plane. Like, that’s true on Delta, EasyJet, Emirates, Singapore Airlines, etc. It’s just the industry standard.

Yet I increasingly find that when I fly American, the flight attendant doesn’t even look up during boarding to acknowledge passengers. I understand flight attendants are sometimes busy during boarding, and I’m understanding if the catering truck is pulled up to the forward right door, or something. But even when nothing special is going on, I find I’m having the same experience way more often than I should.

For example, take the flight I’m on this morning. Despite the flight having dozens of empty seats and boarding starting on-time, the flight attendant at the door didn’t proactively greet a single passenger. She didn’t even look up.

Go figure that once 90% of passengers were onboard, she still spent 10 minutes in the forward galley chatting with a colleague, before passing through the cabin with cups of water.

I wouldn’t think much of this in isolation, except on my last flight on American, I had exactly the same thing happen — the flight attendant at the boarding door just didn’t bother greeting passengers. The only thing I heard is her colleague loudly telling her how he’s “an Airbus queen,” and how he “hates the Boeing 737.” Nice.

Oh, and my flight before that on American? The same thing. Three flights in a row where the flight attendant at the door just didn’t greet passengers.

To be clear, even when they don’t say hi to me, I still say hi to them, and then they’ll respond. But then I also watch how they interact with others, and it’s the same thing — greetings seemingly aren’t included with the fare, and are only offered if they’re “forced” into it.

Here’s the irony, though. In all three cases, the flight attendants were actually pretty decent after takeoff. So it makes you wonder where this falls on the scale of not knowing how to provide good service vs. not caring to provide good service.

Why am I making a big deal out of a simple greeting?

My goal here isn’t to blast a few individual flight attendants, but instead, to point out how broken American’s culture is, under the current leadership. Employees just obviously aren’t aligned with the larger goals of the company, both due to a lack of vision and clear communication from leadership, and also a lack of incentive to care (American’s profit sharing is abysmal, because there are barely any profits to share).

Some people might be saying “well who cares about a greeting?” I think in just about any customer facing setting, first impressions matter a lot. When you fly an airline, you don’t actually interact with that many different employees, especially with the number of self-service options nowadays.

For many passengers, their first interaction will be with the gate agent, and then the flight attendant. I don’t know about you, but I set my expectations for a flight within seconds of boarding, based on the first impression the crew makes.

Sometimes you’ll just have the loveliest flight attendants at the door (including many at American), who warmly greet each passenger with a big smile, compliment passengers, interact with kids, etc. Not only is it really professional, but it can’t help but just make you feel really welcome.

Airlines are obsessed with improving their net promoter scores, and to me, this is the most basic thing they can do to improve customer perception of an experience.

To give another example, I don’t know about you, but within five minutes of arriving at a hotel, I’ve already subconsciously decided how I think the experience is going to be. First impressions really set the tone for things.

And along those lines, let me pay Delta a compliment. If you ask me, the single thing that Delta does best is consistently having employees make customers feel like they matter, especially premium customers. From check-in, to entering the lounge, to boarding, to flight attendant greetings, employees show a fairly consistent level of gratitude toward customers, and it makes a difference. You really feel like the people who you’re interacting with don’t feel inconvenienced to have showed up to work.

Bottom line

While it’s minor in isolation, I’ve now been on three American flights in a row where the flight attendant at the forward door didn’t bother to greet passengers. I just don’t get it, because this seems like such a basic role for a flight attendant.

I can see this happening once in a while, but at American, it seems to be 50/50 nowadays as to whether the flight attendants bother to look up during boarding to greet passengers.

I’m delighted to see American trying to improve its product and become more premium, but the most basic part of that has to include a focus on the culture and service. We’ve (sort of) seen American executives lay out their vision for investing in the experience, but I haven’t seen any detailed acknowledgement of the company’s culture problems.

This just seems like such an obvious thing that crews need to get right. If you’re greeted by a super friendly flight attendant at the door, you can’t help but have a positive impression, and view other aspects of the flight more positively. Meanwhile if you’re not even acknowledged, the opposite is true.